


somewhere along the lonely road

by riririn



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Introspection, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-29 10:01:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15070760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riririn/pseuds/riririn
Summary: Neither Gamora or Peter are experts at this sort of thing. But they try to figure it out, and they try to be there for each other while they are trying to figure out themselves, too.





	1. there have been other girls but no one else like you

**Author's Note:**

> Set post-Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2, but not too long after.

_I know you_ , Peter told her. _The galaxy doesn’t and those a-holes don’t wanna either, but that’s okay, Gamora, because I do, I do._

He was good, in spite of all his baggage (from Yondu, mostly). He was so kind, always, even when he was trying to pretend he wasn’t, and he pretended a lot. He was kind the way she wanted to be but couldn’t quite get the hang of, not yet anyway. Peter could joke all he wanted about her being his and theirs moral compass, but in truth he was hers. Everyone might bitch and whine when she told them no about some illegal job, but she only told them no because she was sure Thanos wouldn’t have cared.

In truth, before meeting Peter, her morality had been tied to what she thought Thanos would do. In her mind, being good had been simple: don’t do what Thanos does. And she hadn’t even managed that much. She had hated herself, so much. Hated Thanos, hated what he had made of her, what he was doing. How he had made Gamora and Nebula hate each other. Hated how he was inside her head.

But with Peter, she could be better. She wanted, desperately, to be better for him, now that they were actually speaking about the Unspoken Thing. He was patient with her, surprisingly so to her. For someone who was so rash in decisions that only concerned him, he was good about letting her set the pace, waiting for her to open up. He was just always there, always present, even when it was clear there was something that reminded him of things he didn’t really want to think about. Yondu, usually, for good or for ill. And the Quadrant had a lot somethings that reminded him of Yondu, and of all the ways he had failed Peter and the ways he hadn’t.

Gamora didn’t really understand it. In some ways, Yondu hadn’t been any better than Thanos; Peter had had as much choice about becoming a Ravager as Gamora had had about becoming the daughter of Thanos. But for all the superficial similarities, and the deeper one’s too, Yondu and his Ravagers had let Peter grow up to be more than just one of them, his own person.

Gamora, in contrast, had been forced to adopt the face of a daughter of Thanos, and worse than that, she had been the favourite daughter. And she didn’t even know what that meant. He had forced her to kill the same as all the rest of them, and she had never gotten more than hatred for being the favourite. She felt like she had actually lost more because of it. Lost chances, lost Nebula, lost herself.

And that was the problem. She didn’t know who she was outside of being the Daughter, she didn’t know who Gamora was.

She had told Peter that, once. He had been drunk. For all that she had tried to be too, she hadn’t been. But Peter had been looking at her and smiling sloppily and looking happy and she hadn’t known what to do with that look, with that smile and the quiet that accompanied it so she had started talking. About how she regretted so many things she had done. How she could feel the weight of Thanos on her, everywhere she went. How she was afraid she would never be more than his daughter. How she wanted, so much, to be more, to be good. And how she was scared that no matter what she did, the universe would never care, would only know Gamora, daughter of Thanos. _I’m scared I’ll always have him inside my head_.

And he had taken her hand and told her that he knew her. That he knew she was strong, that she had chosen the right thing when she the chance, and that she would continue to choose the right thing. That she was good, she wouldn’t even bother thinking of these things if she wasn’t. That the past could consume her and eat her up and spit out and leave her broken if she let it, but that she was too strong for that. And then, slurring, he had told her that he would be there for her, for whatever she needed and had promptly passed out. Which meant that she had to carry him back to the ship while he snored and then come back to get Rocket, but it wasn’t the first time. Or the second, or even the third.

The next morning, when he had crawled to the kitchen and groaned and eaten a couple of ration bars and drank some water while bitching with the equally hung over Rocket over Drax’s well-meant but meaningless advice about avoiding hangovers and Mantis enquiring sweetly about the feeling but not touching, Gamora touched his leg under the table. Peter didn’t really pause in his complaining, but he did kind of glance to her direction, and she smiled, just a little. And he put his hand over hers and that was that.


	2. i'd really wanna go with you

Gamora had spent a lifetime doing terrible, horrible stuff. Like, things had gone bad, and then worse, and it had kept getting worse. But somehow she had walked out of it, she had chosen to walk out, to try and make a life somewhere, anywhere else.

Peter felt in awe of her. Like, seriously. At first it had been just kind of wow, she’s beautiful, and she’s strong, and that was right up his alley, and then life got weird.  And she had said _whatever nightmares the future holds are dreams compared to what’s behind me_ and if that wasn’t one of the saddest things he had ever heard someone say in his sorry-ass life the he might as well just… you know, go do something generally really stupid.

And, just, seriously. His life hadn’t been all that grand either, but since, technically, Yondu hadn’t _forced_ him to stay he could have left at any point after he got the _Milano_ , but he didn’t. All the thieving the Ravagers did and to which he had been a more or less reluctant participant (less and less as time went by, but really, no one cared) was pretty illegal and he was mostly sure none of his relatives back on Terra, his mom included no matter how much she had loved him, would exactly have approved. But with the Ravagers, he knew his place, had a purpose, sort of, or at least had people who would bail him out when he messed up. Or had bailed him out, in the past. Point being, the Ravagers might be an ugly-looking, mostly moronic lot (seriously, Taserface), but he was one them. Just a lot less ugly and probably above average in general intellect.

It wasn’t much, but it was something. And even before Yondu went and, well, gave his life for Peter, he had been _pretty_ sure he had cared. Somewhere under that blue skin and terrible teeth, somewhere very hidden, but still.

He had thought about Yondu and his weird no-reason abduction of Peter on and off, every five years or so. The blue bastard had never given him a better reason than Peter being good for business, and since that had been true enough, he hadn’t really questioned it too much.

After all, for all his whining and reminiscing, Peter didn’t really want to go back to Terra. Sure, he probably still did have some relatives there, uncles and whatnot, so he’d have help if he actually did go back to stay. But in truth, he suspected he would be bored to death if he ever went back there to stay. And seriously, his marketable skills (sweet-talking himself out of sticky situations, thieving, flying a spaceship, and he wasn’t bad with the blaster either, couldn’t afford to be in his line of work) probably wouldn’t get him far in Missouri. So why be an outlaw on a tiny, secluded planet that no one ever went to (aside from a few Asgardians, but they were weird and it probably wasn’t true anyway) when you could be an outlaw in space, on a spaceship, his own thank you very much.

And Star-Lord was a d’ast cool name, no matter what some a-holes (looking at you, Rocket) said.

But, like, whatever. The point was, he had had some choices in his life and he had chosen to stay. Gamora, up until the Incident With the Orb, had had none. And she finally did get the choice, she left and tried not to look back, and Peter really was in awe of her.

He’d never felt like this before. He’d never cared like this before. He didn’t want to mess this up, which was a new one, too. He could tell that Gamora didn’t really know what to do with him and his invitations to dance or drink or whatever, so he kept asking her, so she could figure it out for herself. Kept asking to show her that he thought there was more to her than just the deadly, no-nonsense assassin, to try and let her figure out what she liked. And whenever he could tell that she was looking at him with something kinda like gentle in her eyes, he counted that as a small victory and permission to keep asking. All the big steps, big decisions, he tried to leave to her though. Help her figure out who she could be, and wait and see if she wanted to take a next step in their Somewhat Spoken Thing, which he was pretty sure she did. He would just have to wait a bit for her to feel comfortable enough to start voicing her thoughts on that. He kept trying to give her openings to talk, though, because he could see that she kinda struggling to say what she wanted emotionally, but other than that he tried to keep it his pants. And surprisingly, it wasn’t even that hard, even though what was in his pants would get _pretty_ hard pretty easily if he let his mind wander in her presence.

Not tonight, though. He was just drunk enough that having an inappropriate hard-on wasn’t a problem but not so drunk that he’d feel the need to do something really showy to blow off steam. And Rocket, bless his mean little not-raccoon heart, had disappeared somewhere to do something that would probably have them driven off the town if he got caught, so he was alone with Gamora and could just admire her, her looks and her poise and how brave she was and he was just pretty happy. He could spend the rest of his life like this, with her, which would have terrified him even just a few years ago but now he was just way more than okay with it. Funny how love works.

And then she had started talking, which was a little unusual. And he’d felt so bad for her, for the fear he’d heard in her voice, her words. He was sure he had tried to make her feel better about it, but considering that his next memory was hitting his head to the side of his bunk while being unceremoniously dropped into it, the signs weren’t all that great.

Thankfully his hangover was bad enough that he couldn’t really curse much more than his life choices regarding alcohol, and then she was touching him under the table, her hand kind of on his thigh, tentative, asking almost, like she wasn’t sure. But he saw her smile, just a little, and he’d never seen someone so beautiful in his life and she hadn’t pulled away when he put his hand over hers.

And a few days later, when he was mostly certain that holding hands at breakfast was A Thing now, he felt bold enough to do it elsewhere too, and she smiled to him and squeezed his hand and didn’t pull away. And he held on and on and on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter titles are actually supposed to represent the other's view; so the title of Gamora's chapter is Peter's thoughts and vice versa.
> 
> All the titles are from songs: fic title is from Uriah Heep's Easy Livin', 1st chapter from Salisbury and 2nd chapter from George Harrison's My Sweet Lord, which is on the soundtrack of Vol. 2.


End file.
